Volunteers brought over 830 thousand signatures to the Seym, concerning life protection of disabled and ill children. The project #ZatrzymajAborcję (Stop abortion) beat all pro-life initiatives of this type in the history of independent Poland.

On 30 November 2017 representatives of the Committee of the Civic Legislative Initiative #ZatrzymajAborcję submitted the bill draft in the application office of the Sejm of Poland. There were so many boxes that workers of the parliament had a big problem. – We hope that the Seym will immediately deal with this bill. We hope that it will enact the law which will allow for saving over 1000 children annually, killed as a result of suspected disability – said an initiator of the bill draft Kaja Godek, a mother of a 10-year-old child with Down syndrome, whom doctors had recommended her to abort before birth.

The press conference before the Seym converged with the first abundant snowfall this yeay. Nearly 80 cardboard boxes with the signatures had to be covered with foil so that the whole effort of volunteers would not be in vain. – Today in Warsaw it is snowing, about which children are always happy. Unfortunately, not all of them, on average in the Polish hospital one child is killed every 8 hours in the majesty of law. Today we have come with the good news as Poles want to protect the child – Godek said. – Our bill draft is short, simple, not raising any controversies, and we only want remove eugenic threads from the previous abortion law.

The signatures under the initiative were collected by a few thousand volunteers of the Foundation Life and Family, but also by a lot of other people of good will. A lot of signatures are from individuals, who joined the pro-life action for the defenceless and the youngest Poles – Since the very beginning we have been observing a lot of commotion in our country so we managed to achieve the best result in the history of anti-abortion initiatives. But this is work of over 1000 volunteers and over 50 local leaders – explained Krzysztof Kasprzyk who had coordinated the nationwide action of collecting signatures.

The campaign is supported by people whom this problem concerns directly. Among those collecting signatures there is also Joanna Kossowska, a woman with Down syndrome. She told journalists what her attitude was towards law provisions which allow for killing people like her. – This is inhuman law. It is similar to how the Germans killed disabled people. And this is abnormal – she emphasized. – After all these children have a right to live. I am standing here and showing you that I can live, not be killed before the birth, like these children.

During a conference an opinion was also expressed by Jakub Bałtroszewicz from the European Federation ‘One of us’, who has recently talked with the widow of the French professor Jeromie Lejeunie, who discovered the reasons of the Down syndrome. – Berthe Lejeune said that the Polish initiative is important not only for Poles, but also for whole Europe and the world. It gives hope that civilization will build its identity not on totalitarian ideologies but on the Christian fundament of respect for the human. In her opinion Poland is the last hope of Europe – Bałtroszewicz emphasized.